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Title: Dancing, beauty and games
Author: Constance Stewart Richardson
Release date: March 22, 2026 [eBook #78268]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Arthur L. Humphreys, 1913
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78268
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DANCING, BEAUTY AND GAMES ***
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
This book contains illustrations depicting various states of nudity.
More notes can be found at the end of this book.
DANCING, BEAUTY, AND GAMES
[Illustration: LADY CONSTANCE STEWART RICHARDSON
_From a Photograph by the White Studios_]
DANCING, BEAUTY
AND
GAMES
By
Lady Constance Stewart Richardson
LONDON
ARTHUR L. HUMPHREYS
187 PICCADILLY, W.
1913
CONTENTS
PAGE
PHYSICAL CULTURE 1
GAMES 17
BEAUTY 27
TEACHERS 43
DANCING 55
SWIMMING 63
BIG GAME SHOOTING 77
RELIGION 97
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
LADY CONSTANCE STEWART RICHARDSON _Frontispiece_
A GOOD POSE _facing Page_ 4
RORY DANCING ” 8
RORY, TORQUIL, AND HAMISH ” 12
GROTESQUE TOYS ” 34
MISS ISADORA DUNCAN ” 56
MAD^{LLE} ADELINE GENÉE ” 58
MADAME KARSAVINA ” 60
BAREFOOTED DANCING AFTER THE GREEK STYLE ” 62
ENGLISH POSITION IN AIR WHILE DIVING ” 64
SWEDISH SWALLOW DIVE ” 66
DANCING, BEAUTY AND GAMES
PHYSICAL CULTURE
To try and write about Physical Culture without linking it on to Mental
and Moral Culture would be of little use or interest, as these three
cannot be divided and good come from them, any more than a tree can be
separated from its bark and leaves and live. It is true that many have
realised the great and undeniable truth that Physical Culture properly
used is also mental culture, but it is also true that the masses are
absolutely ignorant of this fact, and merely think that the person
who believes so is a harmless lunatic. That it is within the means of
the majority to have a powerful weapon to combat sins and vice that
at present go rampantly on their way, I do most sincerely believe,
and that weapon is a right understanding of the effect which Physical
Culture has on the mind and body; and that ignorance of this weapon
is almost universal amongst the masses is due to the fact that those
who are at the head of things do not understand and will not listen to
those who do, or take the time and trouble to find out the root of the
evils which exist to such an enormous extent, especially throughout
towns.
That this subject has been handled before by far more skilled writers
than myself I know well, but in most of the articles on Physical
Culture there is a great dislike to tackling the serious side of the
question, and my excuse for doing so is that I have spent all my
life or rather all my thinking life in enquiring into and trying to
understand the effect Physical Culture has on the mind, and that this
effect is tremendous no one who knows anything about the subject can
doubt. The more artificial life becomes, the more necessary it is
to fight the evils which arise from this artificial condition, and
personally I am all for fighting artificiality with nature. Nature,
if understood, seldom fails us. Many hundreds of thousands of pounds
are spent annually on hospitals, homes for the feeble-minded, &c.; if
only a few of those thousands were expended in our schools, and in
the proper teaching of the young, surely in a couple of generations a
great many of the former institutions would be empty. And until it is
understood that to help the human race towards real health, and the
happiness that marches hand in hand with that health, it is necessary
to attack and demolish the amazing system of wicked ignorance which has
our young in its grip--both rich and poor--these institutions will be
needed.
For long it has been the cry, give every one a fair chance, and I do
most sincerely believe that it is possible to give that chance by
turning out into the world self-respecting men and women mentally and
physically developed in the manner that I believe God meant us all
to be; and not maimed body and soul by the course of instruction we
have been put through before we are thrown out on our own resources to
struggle blindly through our lives as best we may in a semi-developed
condition, mentally and physically: some of us perhaps to learn
what a fine thing we could have made of life if only we had known
and understood sooner. That moral feebleness allied to real vice is
tremendously on the increase in large towns, cannot be denied; also
that a great deal of it has its beginning in school-life is well known,
just as it is realised by thinking people that very little effort
is made either to enquire into the cause of it or find a remedy.
It seems to be taken for granted that if a young boy or girl shows
moral feebleness there is nothing much to be done except to hope that
they will not be found out and disgraced. I know well that to cure
immorality in the young once it has established itself, is difficult,
though not by any means hopeless. Cures always are difficult and
take time; therefore prevention is so much simpler: and certainly
a great deal, if not all, of this immorality could be prevented if
Physical Culture and its true effects on body and mind were understood,
and the teaching of a right system was insisted on in all places where
the young gather together.
[Illustration: A GOOD POSE
_From a Photograph by Andrew Paterson, Inverness_]
Let me try and explain what I mean by a right system. It is not just a
different way of exercising the arms, legs, and body. There are many
most admirable methods of Physical Culture, composed and propounded by
men who thoroughly understand the human body and its needs. But what
I think is wanting in our teaching of the young when we teach them
at all, is the giving of any reason as to why they should exercise
regularly; beyond the rather feeble fact that they will most likely
feel better if they do. Give children a true reason for doing anything
and they will hold on to it throughout life, and the true reason for
Physical Culture surely is that God has given you a body and a brain
to develop to the best of your ability, and that when the time comes
to render them back again to your Maker you will be able to do so with
no sense of shame. Instil this into the young and it is wonderful how
they understand and reverence the thought. To merely tell children that
it is jolly to have big muscles and be stronger than their neighbours,
will certainly urge them on for the moment, but these reasons have
little strength or help in them if there is a temptation to be
overcome, and to continue to use them is but building upon sand.
Children are born idealists, and surely it ought to be the duty of all
to make those ideals higher and of a strength that will last through
life. The only ideal that the average child has nowadays is ‘how to
get on,’ and in the getting on if the other fellow goes to the wall
no matter; the ideal of Physical and Mental culture ought to be of
the highest and the greatest purity, and it is only possible to instil
this into the very young. All chance of pure thinking as regards the
body is generally entirely shattered by nurses and parents before a
child reaches four or five years of age: its body is made a shameful
thing to hide as much as possible and never to be referred to. If you
want to feel real shame, and understand the impure manner in which the
body is regarded, watch small children in any well-to-do nursery being
washed by their nurses; instead of being taught that their body is a
beautiful and sacred thing and one of God’s greatest works, they are
made to believe it is a shameful thing. Little harmless questions that
all children ask and which ought to get straight, sensible answers, are
greeted with giggles or winks, and the child is told not to ask naughty
questions. Thus at the beginning of their lives is planted the little,
creeping, insidious, dirty growth. All children will think about their
bodies, it is right and natural that they should do so; only those
thoughts must be guided into pure, sensible channels, not left in black
ignorance, except for the unclean hints dropped by many who, to our
shame be it said, have children in their charge.
To instil pure-mindedness, a child from the moment it can understand
must be taught to take a proper pride in its body, then when come to
man or woman’s full growth, a clean-minded, healthy, happy, human being
will be the result, and during the always more or less difficult age
before full growth is reached there need be little fear of the dangers
and temptations which as a rule beset the young.
[Illustration: RORY DANCING
_From a Photograph by Andrew Paterson_]
If from early youth it was explained and impressed on the young of
both sexes, that it was a real sin against God to allow their minds
to become a mass of sensuality, and that the mind becoming like this
means that the body has been neglected, and the only right remedy for
body and mind is proper exercise and a proper understanding of
what to eat and what to avoid in eating and drinking, what a help it
would be to them. As a rule this is never explained to the young, and
surely its great importance ought to be understood at least by those
who have children in their charge. The ordinary man or woman fighting
the temptations which arise from the artificial conditions of life, are
as helpless from their ignorance and neglect of the human body as a man
naked fighting against one fully armed.
There are a certain number of men and women who are strong-minded
enough to be able to take up physical exercises late in life and get
a considerable amount of good from them, but with the majority unless
the exercises are a habit from early youth, they find them a bore after
the novelty has worn off, and they are eventually dropped altogether.
It is a very great effort for a man or woman who has neglected any
regular exercise all their lives, to get up in the morning and perform
a certain set amount. But if a child is trained almost from infancy to
do this, and made to understand that it is quite as dirty to neglect
the body or to put dirty (otherwise unwholesome) food into it, as it
is to walk about with unwashed teeth, they no more think of neglecting
the care of the one than they do of the other. Therefore, personally,
I always train my own children to exercise ten minutes every morning
before their baths; not that it is a real necessity when living an
open-air life, but that I feel the habit will go with them through
life; also that the time may come when having to be in town it may
prove of incalculable value. At present they would no more think of
missing their exercises than they would their baths.
Again, I think great help against the bad and harmful habits of
drinking and smoking can be given, if a child is taught that his body
is a beautiful and precious trust, and that to soil and harm it by the
accumulation of bad and artificial habits is to commit a real sin,
and also shows a considerable lack of intelligence if commenced with
open eyes and understanding. Also, if the explanation is given of how
these habits grow and take hold, if once started, and how a liking for
them becomes quickly ingrained, I am quite sure that boys and girls
would no more make a habit of these harmful things than they would
cheat at cards--as in one case you are behaving dishonourably to your
fellow-men, in the other you are betraying a trust given into your
hands by God; surely the latter ought to be made of as much importance
as the former. It is all very well to say that smoking and drinking in
moderation harm no one; perhaps not, but the difficulty of keeping them
in moderation is very great, particularly when troubles come along,
which even if they be molehills in reality, to the young are always
mountains, and it seems somewhat foolish to learn and encourage an
artificial habit which may at any time prove a most dangerous enemy,
and is certainly not missed if never begun.
I also feel most strongly that it will be an impossibility to make
Physical Culture what it ought to be until a radical change is made in
present-day clothing for both sexes.
Revolutionise the clothing of children and all would be well, as if
sanely clad during their growing years, they certainly would not submit
in later life to the absurd garments worn by their parents.
[Illustration: RORY, TORQUIL AND HAMISH
_From a Photograph by Andrew Paterson_]
I do not suggest that every one should go about in Greek tunics, as
this garment is not very suitable to our grey climate; but there is a
far cry between a Greek tunic and an Eton suit, for instance. That the
garments children often have to wear are responsible for a great deal
of immorality I am certain, and they are on the whole most insanitary,
great carriers of germs, and intensely uncomfortable as well. There
has certainly been a slight move for the better amongst some who have
stopped their children wearing hats; thus giving them a chance to
grow up without chronic headaches, and to have beautiful hair. Also
a few now give their children a shoe that does not deform their feet
as in the past, but even now it is very rarely that one sees a child
over ten years of age with toes that are not crooked; for it does not
seem to be realised the tremendous pace a child’s foot grows between
the ages of two and fifteen; therefore if only sandals were used for
growing children such a lot of pain and expense might be saved; a
sandal showing at once if it is too small, and also is much cheaper to
replace than shoes, or those still greater iniquities, boots, which
cramp the muscles of the legs and stop the ankle muscles from gaining
growth and strength.
I know that many people will contend that the mental impurity I have
spoken of is the exception and not the rule. I can but ask these people
to spend an afternoon in the sculpture room at a museum or in a
picture gallery, and watch the majority of those who come through and
see the nudes in either marble or on canvas. Apart from a few serious
art students there are generally two types, the one who passes by with
averted head and downcast eyes, getting slightly red in doing so; these
are generally men or women very religious from the world’s point of
view, and with sad, contracted minds. They pray, but at the same time
they have made up their minds that one of God’s most splendid works is
a shameful thing to be covered up, neglected and forgotten as much as
possible.
The other type is the man or woman who comes to stare and giggle, and
nudge with coarse innuendo and joke. These are more awful than the
others to watch, as they are alive with a horrible wakefulness coming
from minds that are merely cesspools.
And with both types the same cause is at work in different ways. They
cannot see a naked figure either in life, painting, or sculpture
without bringing in the sex question. They can see no beauty, as it is
obscured by the grime of their minds.
Surely a state of things to make one stand aghast with bent and shamed
head.
I do not think I ever realised fully the extreme impurity that is rife
through the minds particularly of those who live in towns until I went
on to the stage, and took up classical dancing seriously. Then there
used to pour in upon me a stream of letters of such a terrible kind
that one wondered it were possible for any living being who had a soul
to write such things, and in those days came to me a great and sincere
wish to help on in any way possible the work of trying to establish a
system of Physical and Mental Culture that should give the children
their fair chance in life; for rich and poor there ought to be but one
system, and that instilled in a manner to give to them a knowledge and
reverent love of all that is God’s work, to bring within the reach
of all the chance to keep the body beautiful outwardly and clean
inwardly, and to fill the mind with high ideals and a fine knowledge
of men and books. May we all try and make it more possible and easier
for the little children to walk with firm and unfaltering footsteps the
path that ours have tottered so painfully along.
GAMES
Games are nearly always regarded as recreation, though a few people
take them seriously and work at them with a view to becoming
professionals and earning a livelihood in this manner. When I say
they are used as a recreation, this is applicable to those people who
play different games in a desultory fashion during the whole or part
of the year; showing as time passes curiously little improvement in
their play. Plodding continuously on, but from what point of view it
is difficult to understand, unless it be from a purely animal liking
of being in the open air and the pleasure they derive from following
after, hitting, or kicking a ball. One cannot believe that they can
get any pleasure from the competition arising in games, as they never
strive to improve their play. Many I know have devoted several hours
weekly for a long time to a game, but they play no better or very
slightly better now than when they commenced.
If one remarks on the rather curious mental condition a person must be
in to act like this, the reply generally is, ‘Every one cannot play
games well. A good eye is necessary,’ &c. Certainly that is so, but a
good eye is mostly training and practice like any other muscle control.
Surely if a thing is worth doing at all it is worth doing well, and I
think that any one who gives the matter a few moments’ thought will
agree that it is extremely harmful physically and mentally to go on
doing a thing in the wrong way year after year. It denotes lack of
concentration, lack of self-control, and a general mental sloppiness.
Curiously enough these people are always the ones who continually ask
others to teach and help them to improve their play, but an endeavour
to do so is nearly always greeted with a laugh, and, ‘Oh, yes, I see,’
and they go steadily on with the same faults as before, though quite
often showing that with a little concentration and control they might
have become admirable players. This class of game-player, I feel sure,
has developed from the child who has been allowed to undertake its
games and its work in a slipshod fashion, never being made to realise
that if a game or a piece of work is taken up it should either be done
well and completely or left alone. By this I naturally do not mean
that all amateurs ought not to play a game unless they play it like a
professional, but there is a very far cry between professionalism and
the slipshod game-player. The next type of man who plays games is the
one who does so purely from the health-giving point of view and not
from any real love of games, doing so most likely only when he is a
bit off colour, and in vulgar parlance, wishes to have a good sweat!
A Turkish bath would have as good an effect, but he, like a good
many others, cannot be bothered to seek after health unless his mind
is stimulated and amused at the same time. He is not really of much
interest from the game-playing point of view, as he enters into the
world of games but little.
At the opposite extreme is to be found the man who takes games
seriously, though this type is really divided into two classes; one who
plays games to keep fit, and the other who keeps fit to play games. The
latter, of course, are the men with a real devotion to games who spend
little time doing anything else; at all events, during the season when
their own particular game is to the fore. The questions I think one is
inclined to ask oneself, when seriously thinking over games, are: in
what spirit ought games to be taken? Are they a waste of time or not?
and are they of real good mentally and physically to the player? I have
always personally felt that games, regarded as they are at the present
day, are extremely bad, but if taken in a sane and sensible fashion
ought to be of the greatest value. This is what I mean. Children when
they start to play games are nearly always allowed to do so in a most
haphazard manner; for instance, a child who shows a strong fancy for
games is often left to play them _ad lib._, only being reproved if his
school-work suffers, and often a lenient eye is turned on all shirking
of work if the shirker is found to have used the time for game-playing.
It is rarely explained to him or her that games ought to be regarded as
a recreation and an aid to health, also that if played they ought to
be played properly at proper times. Shirking your other work to play
them or playing them badly is misusing both your body and mind, and
generally hurting yourself physically and mentally.
Games must be looked at in their proper proportion and once finished
with not allowed to usurp the mind, as a man who makes games his sole
thought throughout life is a sad person to meet. If the child who was
backward and rather stupid at games was taken a little trouble with
and equally taught with his more forward brother that games are to be
regarded educationally like any other physical exercise, I think that
as grown men they would both be improved. On the one hand, you would
not find the man who does not play games at all, from having been told
when a child that he was no use; and on the other, the man who eats,
thinks, talks, and sleeps games: but two human beings with the good
health, concentration, quickness, and self-control which games properly
used certainly bring, all of which are most admirable qualities having
a very great effect on a man’s life in all and every profession. A man
of the above qualities, added to a clean outdoor sense of things, is
far more apt to make a success of his life from the higher point of
view than the one without them. Equally this reacts on his children.
The man of control and understanding will most assuredly see that his
children are trained to have the same qualities.
I do not think it can be repeated too often what great harm can be
done to children, and, alas! is done both physically and mentally, by
allowing them to play games at all times and in any manner they please.
It is quite time it was realised that during the period the brain and
body are developing, enormous care ought to be taken in the supervision
of all bodily exercises, for that their effect is very great on the
brain only the ignorant will deny. A child left to exercise itself
at games will as a rule play till it is dead beat, thus undoing any
good that might come to it from the exercise of its muscles and mind,
as long before it has got to this stage of tiredness it will have
been hitting wrong, running wrong, and forcing the heart to overwork.
Mentally it will be over-excited, the eye will be strained, and the
temper out of control. One of the great advantages of games is the
teaching of tolerance and self-control, but when a thing is young and
tender it does not do to bear too heavily on it. Whereas judicious
exercise strengthens a weak thing, heavy work will merely spoil it,
and in all probability ruin it for all time. How often one sees a
child burst into tears for no obvious reason, become irritable and
bad-tempered, and when bedtime comes lie awake for hours. The cause
nearly always being the ignorance of teachers and parents who in their
mistaken kindness allow children to play games until they can hardly
walk with fatigue. I have often been asked if I advocate games for
children; before the ages of ten or eleven years old I certainly do
not, and between those ages and sixteen, I think games ought to be most
carefully supervised and chosen, and for these reasons. From infancy
up to eleven years is a most critical period, the most critical I
personally believe in the whole life. When a young child is playing
games it is most difficult, in fact almost impossible, to get it to
remember several things at once. What I mean is this. A young child at
this period is merely learning everything, how to walk, how to run,
and how to balance itself correctly. The meaning of perfect poise
ought at this age to be installing itself into a child’s mind; in the
excitement of the game a child as a rule tries to do too much, with
the result that in a short space of time it will be walking badly and
heavily, and running in an ugly, uncertain fashion.
Then there are very few games which do not draw the body forward,
contracting the chest, in consequence of which the breathing is
restricted, which naturally renders the blood impure, this leading to
a thousand troubles. Also I do not believe it is good or natural for
any young undeveloped thing to be knocked about in the way that happens
in a good many games, as the muscles and bones are soft and apt to
be distorted easily. Children in a natural rough-and-tumble amongst
themselves are no more likely to hurt themselves or each other than
puppies or any other young animal at play, but bring in the competition
and the unnatural excitement which creeps into games that after all
are an artificial amusement, more harm than good is likely to result to
children under sixteen years of age. After that age, regarded in their
proper proportion, I think they are excellent. I am a firm believer for
the young in individual athletic exercises such as running, jumping,
throwing the hammer, the discus, swimming and dancing, &c., but under
the eye always of an experienced person, as in these exercises it is
possible to control and watch the work of each child, to see and teach
that each muscle is developed in proper fashion, and by degrees the
girl or boy will understand how to control the whole body in a perfect
manner, each and every muscle hardening and enlarging to its full
development. If this form of physical education is carried out from
infancy, at sixteen years old a girl or boy ought to be fit to take
up any game they may have a fancy for, reaping the great good that
certainly may be got from games and equally avoiding the great harm.
BEAUTY
To instil a love of beauty into a child’s mind at the commencement
of its life is not necessary, as normal children will always hold
out their hands and seek to draw towards them all that is beautiful,
instinctively turning away and shrinking from the hideous and
grotesque. But what is necessary is to foster, protect, and encourage
this natural gift, and it is only too evident that this necessity is
not only neglected, but that the love of the hideous and grotesque is
actually forced into the minds of the young, and the growth of that
love helped on in every possible way. There are many who scoff at the
belief that the love and true realisation of all beauty ought to be
one of the most serious sides in the education of the young, but I
think it would behove them to give a few hours’ serious consideration
to the subject, before dismissing it with one of the contemptuous
laughs that are so freely given by the people who have never taken the
trouble to probe very deeply into any new effort or idea that may come
their way. Not that the idea of instilling the love and understanding
of beauty into the young is a new one, as in ancient Greece it was a
recognised part of all education, but most certainly for many and many
a generation it has never been given a thought to, except in isolated
cases. I do not think it would be a waste of time if some of our best
brains at the head of things would give some serious consideration from
a purely common-sense point of view, as to whether it may not stand
within the bounds of reason that a very large part of the decadence,
vice, and educational failure is not largely due to the entire lack
in that education of any effort being made to teach the difference
between the ugly and the beautiful.
Sin and vice are strangely like unto ugliness and repulsiveness.
Equally, cleanliness and culture of mind, body, and spirit are not
mean reflectors of the beautiful. It is not difficult to realise that
perhaps the neglect of teaching the one has a good deal to do with the
existence of the other. That a most drastic change in this direction
would be greatly for the benefit of all children I most firmly believe.
The richest and the poorest ought to have the same chance of being
allowed to keep that wonderful gift, a love of beauty, which is a
heritage to all, and not to have it snatched away only to be replaced
by that which will cause them to go mentally blind through life,
missing all the joy which comes to those who can see with undimmed eyes
the wonders that God has placed in the world for all.
A love of the obviously beautiful I do not think is of any great help
or value, though naturally better than entire blindness: to only
admire what, so to speak, shrieks its beauty at you, takes no great
understanding or discrimination. Neither does it take great powers
of observation. Stone-blindness would have to be the portion of the
man who was not more or less impressed by the Grand Canyon or Niagara
Falls. But to see and rejoice over little pools with the light throwing
different shadows, a drop of dew hanging on a blade of grass, or a
myriad other miniature miracles, which happen around us day and night,
takes a power of observation and realisation that lies only in the
human being who has had his eye trained to observe and his mind to feel
and rejoice in all beauty, whether it be great or small, the largely
obvious or that which requires careful looking for.
It cannot be denied that a power of observation is of great value in
all walks of life; allied to a powerful memory it is of still greater
value. Both of these can be taught to a great extent by encouraging
the children in their love of the beautiful, which ought to be
commenced in the observation and understanding of God’s work in Nature.
The millions of beautiful things by which He has surrounded us are
generally entirely unnoticed and ignored by the average child, and
the wonderful reading of that book of Nature He has laid before us to
instruct and help, is indeed a closed book except to the very few. That
Nature-study is taught in many schools I am fully aware, but it is
taught as a rule in a purely scientific manner, which at once does away
with any chance of establishing high ideals by its help. Flowers are
pulled to pieces, their growth and formation explained; a drop of water
is taken, placed under a microscope, and the germs in it pointed out.
That this is excellent and ought to be known and understood by all, I
do not for a moment deny, but its place is secondary; God’s unspoken
lesson of beauty in Nature is surely a far greater one than what man
has found out about His work, and if this is the case, it seems to me
that the first lesson of all that ought to be taught to the young is to
look for and find all the beauties expressed in Nature. The colours and
the scent of the flowers, the way they group themselves, the fashion
in which they turn and seek the sun; to hear the music in the streams
composed of a hundred different notes, to lie and watch the many
changing lights and colours on running waters, to love the reflections
in the pools and to learn to wander in that children’s second land
‘under the water,’ or to watch in breathless wonder the ripple of the
soft summer breezes across that dry land-sea, the bit of rough ground
with tall grasses of many kinds in full bloom; some almost pigeon-blood
in colour, others pure gold. To hear the voices of the wood-people
complaining as the wind-god moving through the trees disturbs them, or
in his anger storms along on wintry days and nights, calling out in his
wrath to the thunder and lightning to come and join him on his noisy
way. All idealistic and fanciful, no doubt.
But who will deny that the man or woman who can see and hear clearly
the voices of Nature, and who has the power to weave happy, harmless
fancies, is not a better and more pure-minded person than one who
outside of his own profession can neither see nor hear, and if placed
apart from that profession is helpless and miserably bored. If
unhappiness comes to him in his chosen work, he knows not where to seek
help and distraction in a clean and healthy way. It has often been
said that Mother Nature is a great healer: she most certainly is when
we are given a chance of finding and knowing her, but to the average
human being her existence may be known of, but the way of reaching
her healing touch is a road carefully guarded, and hidden away out
of sight, except to the adventurous few who have strength of mind to
struggle on against all difficulties and seek her for themselves.
Surely we have no right not to lay open to the best of our abilities
this road of happiness and comfort to all children; to shut them out
into a materialistic darkness of mind, to crush that love of beauty
that God has thought right to instil into every infant mind. Instead,
there are a great many parents and teachers banded together with one
object, that being to destroy and stamp out any love of beauty that may
peep out from a child’s mind, to uproot it and there plant instead a
million growths of rank and ugly thoughts all overshadowed by one great
primary planted tree whose name is the love of the ugly and grotesque;
from it branches another smaller tree called the power of being able
only to see the bad; creeping up this is the worm of blindness to all
God’s teaching of Nature. A truly terrible garden indeed, and apt to
bear fruit plentifully now and afterwards.
I went to one of London’s largest toy-shops the other day and there
bought some toys which can be seen in the following photograph. I was
told that they were very popular, and it is difficult to believe that
sane people can give their children toys of this kind, and not
realise in any way the irreparable harm they are doing to their minds,
particularly as most small infants will turn shuddering from this
ugliness presented to them, but are coaxed into thinking they like
these hideous things, until they really do come to take a pleasure in
them. So the first great lesson of man’s teaching is learnt, taken into
your heart and mind the ugly and repulsive thought and thing that God
tells you instinctively to turn from and beware of. A few years of this
teaching and God’s voice of instinct grows dim and at last ceases. So
we wilfully and of our own accord strike out of our children’s lives
one great help and safeguard, instead of aiding them to develop and
strengthen it, so as to get all the joy and happiness possible from
this great gift.
[Illustration: GROTESQUE TOYS]
It may be agreed that a love of beauty has brought many a man and woman
to sin, and it is true that such a love superficial and untrained,
may well do so, But that love, trained and instilled into the human
mind along with a deep and reverent understanding, can only be of the
greatest help and benefit. In this case the beauty and purity of the
soul, and that wondrous temple, the human body, would prove too strong
a responsibility to allow the mind to smirch them with sin and vice. In
advocating that children should be taught to see Nature’s works with
clear eyes, I do not mean that the many wonderful and beautiful works
of Man should be ignored: only with God’s works we can roam amongst
them, knowing that what they teach can only be good; with Men’s we
must walk warily, picking out for the help of the young only those
things that speak of fine and pure intention, and that can start no
train of impure thought. Of the greatest influence for good, I put the
sculpture of the ancient Greeks foremost: it cannot be studied too much
by the young; the more it is loved and understood the more lessons it
teaches, a deep and wide sense of extreme quietness and nobility, an
understanding and reverence in the truest sense of the word for the
beauty of the human body, to mar or ill-treat which was a sin against
all that was highest in them. A great patience and an almost superhuman
effort and striving towards all that was greatest and best, a reaching
out of mind and soul to do honour to Him who made them; what matter if
their gods were many, the effort and the reverence were the same, and
as such will surely be recorded.
Will ever a quarter be understood as to what we owe these ancient
masters of art, the help they have been to thousands in their gentle
and sincere teaching--only thousands, alas! for of the millions of
people reared and taught in our country, it is the few who find out
by accident or design the beauties and wonders of their works? It is
true that bodies of school-children are escorted at intervals to the
British Museum, where they are shown round by some one who is supposed
to have a knowledge of the contents. Many a time have I watched the
groups with a sad heart, realising how much help and joy they were
missing. ‘That is a statue by So-and-so, 400 B.C.,’ on and on from one
thing to another, merely a jumble of names and dates; no aid given to
those muddled young minds towards their seeing and understanding the
beauty they are gazing at; no chance given them to take in the message
of purity and quietness that those great works send forth everlastingly
to those who have learnt to see and hear. What good is there in knowing
a list of famous names if the knowledge ceases at that, and the work
that made those names famous is unknown and unrealised? The human being
who feels a great humility and thankfulness before all beauty, whether
God’s work or Man’s, says a truer and more sincere prayer than he who
sits in church and parrot-like repeats long prayers to the God whose
work he either knows not, or does his best to destroy.
We are told in the Bible that we are made in the likeness of God.
It is wonderful how far we have managed to stray from it, and how
determined we are that our children shall have no chance to attain to
it. With studious care have we built up year by year a mass of customs
and habits that successfully bar us from anything much higher in
appearance than the apes some think we are descended from. Sometimes
one sees a human face and body that has been strong enough to struggle
into maturity unmarked and maimed in spite of Man’s laws, and when we
see such a one, it is with a heart full of wrath and pity that we gaze
around on the crippled, hideous bodies that might be like unto gods
walking, and are merely distorted shapes, breeding further shapes still
more distorted, and a vista of horror is opened in the mind, and one
seems to hear the cries of millions of unborn children, each generation
a little more horrible to look at; with minds a little lower and more
sin-filled, and with less and less hope of gaining all that has been
lost. More lives to work out their own hell, fewer to live in Heaven.
To keep a child’s mind filled with beautiful thoughts, and let their
eyes see only beautiful things is, I know well, a difficult matter
nowadays, since we have filled the world with hideous things and the
minds of those about us with ugly thoughts, but the importance of
doing so is, as I have said before, very great. It seems to me as if
beautiful ideas and things have a very slight, delicate growth in
the brain while it is in its early development, while the ugly and
grotesque takes hold with giant roots, and once allow the latter to
creep in first, it will oust all after attempts to replace it with the
delicate plant of beauty. But keep the mind well stocked with all that
is beautiful, and by the time the brain and body are developed, these
plants will have attained to such strong and noble proportions that
little fear need be felt of the others finding any space to live in and
flourish.
There is a great deal of talk nowadays about Eugenics and theories on
improving the human race. It might be well worth the experiment to try
how the gospel of beauty taught in the deepest and truest sense might
succeed where everything else has failed; if we were educated to see
ugliness, mental and physical, as sins of the most serious description
against our Maker, whether would it not prove a very powerful help
towards the uplifting of the human race from the mire in which it at
present lies.
TEACHERS
Having tried to show how important the teaching of the love of beauty
is to children, and how important it is during the early development of
the brain to keep all that is bad and repulsive away, and only present
the good and the beautiful, it may not be out of place to say a little
on the subject as to the difficulty of getting teachers who have ever
given these ideas a thought, and if asked to carry out one’s wishes
on this subject simply regard one as a harmless lunatic. A few are
conscientious enough to make efforts, but even these are a hopeless
failure, and for this reason, if no thought has been given during the
years of training as to the necessity of keeping ugliness, physical
and mental, from children, it is almost impossible, unless unusually
gifted in self-control, to restrain one’s self a hundred times an hour
from doing or saying something ugly before children; also, with the
best endeavours in the world, the deplorable fact remains that the
great majority do not know what is ugly and what is beautiful.
Nine years ago, I started with a light heart and a happy mind to
educate my eldest son in the way in which I considered all children
ought to be educated: in other words only pure and good thoughts were
to be instilled into his mind, and he was never to have the ugly and
grotesque forced on his notice. My difficulties began with my first
nurse, and they have gone on increasing through a series of nurses and
governesses. That they should not understand one’s ideas on the subject
was not surprising, as their upbringing made these ideas a closed
book to them; but what was so heart-breaking was that after hours of
explaining and reasoning, and eventually in despair almost extorting
promises that they should endeavour to speak only what was truthful and
good, and that they should refrain from ugly tales and dirty ideas,
it began to dawn on me that most of these people who take charge of
children do not know the difference between what is good and what is
bad for children to see and hear, and all the explaining in the world
could not teach them: proving that unless the study of these things is
undertaken in youth, it is of little use later in life to try and learn
it. Some of them really tried, they genuinely wished to please me, but
it was hopeless from my point of view; in fact, I was talking a strange
tongue to them, and with the best endeavours they could not understand
a language they had never learnt. It is certainly not my wish to decry
the faithful service that nurses have given to their charges, a good
deal more faithful than many mothers. But what I do want to point out
is that the training of nurses and teachers is as a rule far from what
it ought to be, and until this training is most thoroughly altered it
is worse than useless to try and raise the education of children to a
higher and purer level. First of all, it must be recognised that these
people on whom the future of our young so largely depends ought to be
the most respected and honoured amongst people, and this feeling of
responsibility and honour ought to be ingrained in the minds of those
who intend to enter the vocations of nursing or teaching. Not, as so
often is the case, that teaching is taken up when a failure is made at
other professions, and when you find in rich houses that the teachers
or nurses of the children are paid considerably less than the cook or
butler. Until teaching is put upon its proper pedestal and regarded
as the most honoured of professions, and one not to be entered into
lightly, so will education remain at its present low level.
It is constantly being said that there are so many clever women
leaving our colleges each year, and finding it difficult to earn a
livelihood: surely teaching ought to give many of them a profession
in life; but until the profession is regarded rightly, as one of the
most high and sacred callings, clever men and women will consider it
beneath them, or only to be used as a step towards something better.
Certainly, latterly, there has been some improvement in the methods
of imparting knowledge to the young, but I am afraid that these
methods have not always been used for the good only of the child. Too
many good teachers are given to cramming infants’ minds to an extent
extremely harmful, only caring to produce on examination days tiny
children who can repeat pages of verse and prose--in other words, at
the expense of the child’s health and mind, they nurture their own
vanity, showing that their idea of responsibility is as lax as their
knowledge of the delicate structure they undertake to build up. The
ignorance of the people to whom children are entrusted on the science
of Pedagogy is truly amazing. They know nothing about the body, and
still less about the working of a child’s brain. They do not know
what is harmful physically, or what effect body has on brain, or
_vice-versa_; they have a smattering of Physical Culture and this is
used indiscriminately, and they cannot be blamed, as they have never
been taught even the rudiments of a science which they ought to know
thoroughly before they essay to teach. For it is, I am certain, this
entire lack of knowledge as to the brain and body and the effect of
one on the other, that leads to so much distress and sin, and that is
such a handicap in any efforts that are made to fill the mind with only
what is worth while. Excellent methods such as Dr. Montessori’s are
terribly hampered by the difficulty of finding people in any quantity
capable of carrying out ideas which require careful observation and a
real knowledge of the child’s mind and body. They may earnestly strive,
but they will fail, and consequently many good methods brought forward
by clever trained people go to the wall and are labelled as useless,
simply because the teachers are quite incompetent to either grasp
or carry out any method which requires a real and not a superficial
knowledge of Pedagogy.
Now this is all rather dreadful, and the only way to improve matters
and give children a chance of starting life with a healthy and pure
outlook is for all parents to band themselves together and insist
that the people who volunteer to take charge of and educate children,
shall have received a proper training both mentally and physically. If
this was done, in one generation, education in the highest sense of
the word would have a bright outlook, as people who have received a
sane and clean education themselves will most certainly see that their
children receive and benefit by the same. I do not think that parents
can often give much thought as to the unlimited amount of harm done in
their nurseries. The conversations that are carried on before young
children, between nurse and nursery-maids, are five times out of six
harmful, I am certain; and any observing mother can tell, from the way
children behave and the things they talk about, the sort of influence
that is unconsciously wielded by the nurses in charge. Looking back at
my nursery days, and my memory of them is very distinct, I can easily
remember the kind of topics that were discussed before me: every sort
of gossip on the latest scandals, the latest murder, horrors of war,
&c., all in their most gruesome details. I was, I suppose, about four
or five years of age, and those conversations are clear in my memory
to this day. My nurse was the dearest and most faithful of old Scotch
servants, and would have given her life gladly for any of her charges,
but she had never been taught herself as to what was harmful and what
was not for children to see and hear, and had the uneducated person’s
general idea that children up to the age of about ten years are deaf,
dumb, and blind. Many and many an evil growth and crooked outlook on
life is gained in those early nursery days, and they cling steadily
through life. In these days of heavy doings and light thinkings, the
children of the well-to-do are more and more left in the charge of
others than their parents, and it seems that this would become more
so than less in the future. So, surely, a giant effort should be
made towards establishing a training college, or improving the ones
at present in existence, and insisting that nurses and teachers are
trained so as to have considerably higher ideals than they have at
present, and a far deeper knowledge of the mind and body, before they
are allowed to play havoc with the lives of the young.
Most certainly there are many young people who love children, and have
themselves been brought up in a clean, though perhaps limited manner:
opportunities should be given to them to train so as to become able
to take charge of children and to fully understand the tremendous
responsibilities they undertake when children are given into their
charge.
A man would be considered a great fool if he placed a valuable
racehorse in the hands of an ordinary stable-man to be trained for
a great race, and the horse would stand little chance to win unless
handled by an experienced trainer who had made it his business for
years to learn all there was to know on the subject of handling
valuable animals. He would give hours of observation and thought, he
would know to a hair’s weight what the animal could stand physically,
any mental idiosyncrasies would be studied and sought to be overcome.
But the average person who has charge of children as a rule not only
does not know even the anatomy of the child, but the formation of its
mind and the proper way of training that mind, and bringing it to a
full and perfect development, is often not even considered a matter
of importance. I do not wish to imply that these people are purposely
negligent of their duties, I merely wish to point out that the large
majority do not realise or understand, from their imperfect training,
either duties or responsibilities, the idea being very often that
children will turn out good or bad men or women quite independently of
their upbringing and the influence brought to bear on them during the
early years of their development.
DANCING
For many years I have been a most ardent admirer of Miss Isadora
Duncan, and there is no doubt that in the revival of classical
barefooted dancing she stands out with great brilliancy. All praise is
due to her as a creator of this school of dancing, and those amongst
us who seek to follow in her footsteps do so, I fear, but feebly. I
think I am right in saying that all the sincere classical dancers wish
to forward this school, not merely from the point of view of making
money on the stage, but from the educational value they feel it ought
to hold in the upbringing of all children of both sexes. And that this
value is very great has been proved as much as such a young movement
can be proved by Miss Duncan, M. Jacque Dalcroze, and others. Though,
of course, the eurhythmics of Jacque Dalcroze is a system of training
entirely different in method from that of any one else.
[Illustration: MISS ISADORA DUNCAN
_From a Photograph by the Dover Street Studios_]
One of the greatest advantages that classical dancing holds over the
toe-dancing school is that it is possible to become proficient in it by
giving a short time daily to its practice, instead of the many hours
and years of arduous work that a toe-dancer has to go through before
becoming a finished exponent of the art. One is an accomplishment
that we all ought to be able to enjoy, the other is only possible
for the woman who means to make it a profession, and give the best
years of her life to it. Though to become a good classical dancer it
is not only necessary to take a child and instruct it in the art of
moving gracefully if the rest of its education does not assist in
the teaching. From earliest infancy it must be taught to observe, to
concentrate, to realise the beautiful in line and colour, and
to have the ugly and repulsive kept away from it, encouraged to copy
beautiful poses and eventually express to music in movement what that
music says to it. The educational value of classical dancing is that
its expression has to come from within. A toe-dancer is very often
merely a brilliant machine. Her dance is often composed for her by her
professors, and her well-trained muscles merely respond like a perfect
machine to their commands. It therefore follows that the educational
value in such dances is practically nil, apart from the dancers having
had to learn muscle-control, patience, and endurance, which of course
is of use. A child trained to classical dancing in the right way will,
by the time it reaches full growth, dance, I feel sure, as we were all
meant to dance, every muscle in control and the mind enveloped in the
glory of expressing beauty by perfect rhythmical movements. Having
worked on the stage as a classical dancer for a short time I was a
good deal saddened by the adverse criticisms I heard on all sides,
about the bare-footed school of dancing: general sameness and general
dullness were the two most severe. My own dancing being criticised I
did not mind. I was merely a beginner, and beginners nearly always
have to suffer. I asked many and various people as to the reasons of
these criticisms and always got the same answer: ‘Very pretty, yes, but
when it is seen once, that is sufficient. Interesting, I dare say, to
painters and sculptors who know when a pose is pure and a faithful copy
of the antique, but the general public don’t, and all the poses and
dances look much alike.’
At that time I used to get angry, and salved my wounded feelings by
putting these people down as narrow-minded and inartistic, but at the
bottom of my heart I felt that they had some right on their side. I
went several times to see classical dancing which was supposed to be
good, and tried fairly with an open mind to criticise it. After a good
deal of sincere study and thought on the subject I came to the
conclusion that to a great extent these criticisms were right. What
was lacking I was sure was the absence of any real joyousness and life
in the dancing. The dancers did their best, but with the exception of
Miss Duncan’s work, which carries a splendid joyousness in it, the
dancing was curiously dead and heavy. The poses were good, the arms
and body graceful and trained, but the legs and feet of most of them
were totally untrained, the muscles soft and flabby, thus causing every
movement to be devoid of life. In fact, an exact antithesis to the
toe-dancer, who very often has wonderfully trained legs and a great
rigidity of arms and body. The Russian dancers have to a great extent
got away from this very ugly style.
[Illustration: MAD^{LLE} ADELINE GENÉE
_From a Photograph by the Dover Street Studios_]
Many contend that the ancient Greek dancers, whom the present-day
classical dancers try to copy, did not train their legs for dancing,
but merely used them as supports for the body and arms, to which all
the graceful movements were confined. Personally, I feel sure that
the Greeks if they trained their bodies and arms for the dance did not
neglect the legs and feet, as they were known to insist most strongly
in their physical education on perfect muscular development throughout
the body.
[Illustration: MADAME KARSAVINA
_From a Photograph by the Dover Street Studios_]
Then came to me the problem which I have attempted to solve during
the last three years. Is it possible to combine Greek poses, graceful
body movements, and plastic light movements of the legs, so that
the whole may be welded and work smoothly together. In fact, to try
and resemble the Russian dancers in their lightness and charm, but
avoiding the tortuous and unnatural movements and positions favoured
by the toe-dancer. I felt sure that a great deal of the lightness of
the toe-dancer’s work could be brought with great advantage into the
classical dancer’s, and still lose none of the simplicity and purity
which is the barefooted dancer’s ideal, rather in fact add to it, as
it is quite unnatural to have heavy, uncontrolled muscles. This can be
proved by watching the dancing of savages, whose movements may be
grotesque, but every muscle is under control, and each movement sure.
The answer to all this by many would be that it is only necessary to
remove the tights, shoes, and ballet-skirt from any of the leading
toe-dancers, replace them by a Greek drapery, and you will have a
perfect classical dancer: for many of the Russians have shown that they
have studied a certain amount of this work as far as poses go in some
of their ballets--‘Narcissus,’ for instance. But there are several
insuperable objections to this, one of the foremost being that an
experienced toe-dancer’s bare foot is nearly always a thing of horror
to look at. Secondly, a toe-dancer gets all her positions with her foot
pointed as stiffly as possible, and her foot when not on the ground is
never otherwise than pointed. A bare foot pointed, even a well-shaped
bare foot, is an extremely ugly thing. A toe-dancer’s foot has at
all times to be rigid. She gets her muscular control from the rigid
foot upwards, and it would be an unheard-of fault for a toe-dancer
to allow her foot to become limp at any moment while dancing. Again,
a classical dancer must have her bare feet limp exactly like her
hands: the greatest difficulty I found was to keep the feet limp and
get the muscular control in the legs, also not to let the feet look
dead. All dancers have to conquer this difficulty in their hands when
learning to dance. A limp hand and a dead-looking hand are two very
different things. I have worked hard for three years at what I think
I am justified in calling a new form of bare-foot dancing. I make no
pretence of having perfected it, but I hope it is a step in the right
direction towards dancing that shall be perfect in pose and expression,
and that will help the human mind and body to retain its birthright of
beauty.
[Illustration: BAREFOOTED DANCING AFTER THE GREEK STYLE
_From a Photograph by the White Studios_]
[Illustration: BAREFOOTED DANCING AFTER THE GREEK STYLE
_From a Photograph by the White Studios_]
SWIMMING
If asked which style of physical exercise I should recommend to
bring nearly all the greater muscles of the body into play, and be
of all-round value to the exerciser, I should unhesitatingly say
swimming--and it is with a good deal of pleasure one notices how
greatly on the increase the learning of swimming is amongst well-to-do
people, and that parents are beginning dimly to realise what an
incalculable amount of good children of both sexes gather from this
exercise. Having seriously studied swimming and diving since I was
fourteen years old, I feel that I am at liberty to speak strongly on
the subject; of the good that can be got from indulging in one of the
most pleasurable physical exercises there are, and also the harm that
can result from bad teaching, &c.
Having been a member of the Bath Club, London, since it first opened,
I have had every opportunity of studying swimming and the people who
swim--and there is no doubt that the Club has done an enormous lot
to encourage learning swimming amongst the rich and their children,
particularly the latter, averaging in age from three years old and
upwards; also, of course, I have swum and watched swimming in many
other countries and baths. An interesting thing is that most of the men
anyway who swim seriously, going in for competitions, exhibitions, &c.,
are gleaned from the working classes, not from the idle rich, who one
would imagine have far more time and opportunity to perfect themselves.
But the art of swimming and diving is curiously little excelled in by
the latter. They of course know how to swim, as that is taught at most
public schools--but few get any further, the real swimming world
being composed nearly entirely of hard-working men. This, of course,
refers to England. When I first began swimming it was thought quite out
of the common to take an interest in this exercise, and women who swam,
amongst one’s friends, could be counted on the fingers of one’s hand.
As to high diving, that was looked at in horror and amazement.
[Illustration: ENGLISH POSITION IN AIR WHILE DIVING]
Then the Swedish divers came to London and gave exhibitions of high
diving; and people began to realise that there might be something worth
while in this art beyond the ordinary flopping-along breast-stroke
through the water, which was about as much as the average woman,
anyhow, dared to try. Swimming clubs for both sexes began to crop
up, competitions were started, prizes given--and the standard rose
by degrees to what it is now. Not high enough, by any means, but an
enormous improvement on fifteen years ago. I personally think that what
makes the Swedish divers stand out as a rule head and shoulders above
any other divers is their marvellous realisation of form in their
work, and to define what one means by form is almost impossible. Some
will say a diver with a great deal of finish has good form, personally
I think it quite possible to be an absolutely finished diver and yet
lack a great deal in form. It seems to me that the great dash and
boldness and muscular control the Swedes exhibit in the air has a great
deal to do with it. One of the above qualities is often seen, but all
three together seems almost unique to the Swedish divers.
Perhaps it may be interesting to mention the difference between a plain
English dive and a plain Swedish dive. As regards the positions--the
English dive is taken with the hands pointed straight up above the
head, from the tips of the fingers to the end of the toes the body
ought to be in a straight line. The Swedish plain dive is the swallow
dive, so called from the position of the hands and arms out from the
shoulders at almost right angles. During the flight through the
air the back is hollowed as much as possible. A man doing a high
running swallow dive greatly resembles a bird swooping down, and the
beauty of line that the best divers manage to get into it is remarkable.
[Illustration: SWEDISH SWALLOW DIVE]
Of course the muscular development and control needed in high diving is
very great--therefore making it a most valuable exercise. A really good
high dive and perfectly developed and controlled muscles are bound to
go together.
I think that the beauty in the art of diving is greatly under-valued,
and gracefulness not nearly enough insisted on in the teaching of it;
like all other physical exercises unless fitness and beauty of the body
are the aim of the exerciser, they ought to be left alone, little good
will certainly be gathered from any form of exercise if it is entered
into merely in the spirit of competition, and not with the wish to
improve the body and the mind. Most exercises of a vigorous kind will
help a person mentally: for instance, the mind would have to be a
seething mass of corruption if it was past being helped by the contact
and feel of cold water after a rush through the air from a height;
unclean and impure thoughts that crowd gaily and with little shame
under the electric lights in a crowded restaurant would not venture to
show themselves when the body is tingling and the mind rioting with
joy from a swift rush through the sunlit air into a still pool in a
river, or even into the green depths of a swimming-bath. No; exercise
aided by cold clean water and fresh air do not walk hand in hand with
uncleanliness of spirit, and if only this was more understood and
realised by parents, how much unhappiness and peril might be saved
their children. As to the teaching of children--swimming ought to be
taught to all and taught in the right spirit--not regarded as a means
to clutch a gold medal from some less fortunate brother or sister,
but a glorious means of helping themselves mentally and physically,
and an exercise that ought to be put within the reach of rich and
poor; and, I feel most strongly, taught, as all physical exercises
should be taught, to man and woman, as a weapon to combat through life
temptations and sorrows which come to all on life’s journey. It is
only necessary to watch small children splash about in pool or bath to
understand what great joy can be given them and in a very easy manner.
Taught and helped they make marvellous progress and even the quite
small ones will strive to perfect themselves in stroke or dive--also
love of the water seems to breed good temper and good fellowship,
therefore surely that love is to be encouraged. As to the harm that
can be got from swimming I think it is the same that can be found in
any exercise that is practised in a harmful manner. Overstrain is
particularly liable in children who are allowed and encouraged to race
each other until their hearts are bumping, which also leads to bad
swimming. I am sure no serious racing ought to be allowed to the young
until the strokes are sure and perfect.
Again, children, in baths especially, are allowed to stay in far too
long. No time limit can be given, I know, as one child can stay in
the water a great deal longer than another, but constantly one sees
children blue with cold and exhaustion, and when they are taken out of
the water only too often parents and teachers hurry them off to stand
under a hot shower-bath or, a still worse evil, take them into the hot
room of a Turkish bath to get warmed up, consequently an overtired,
flushed child is the result, instead of a happy, brisk, and refreshed
one. Less time in the water, and, if cold, a few exercises or a romp
to warm up after, will be far more successful and also stop the plaint
which is often dinned into our ears--‘Such a pity my child can’t learn
to swim, but she or he always catches cold afterwards.’
Small children can learn, apart from the ordinary breast and side
strokes, all the so-called fancy work in the water, of which there are
many different varieties--all of them being a great aid to gracefulness
and sureness, and delighting children as well as grown-up people.
Personally I am no believer in high diving for young children, as the
muscles are seldom either strong or controlled enough to make a fair
certainty of the dive being a good one, and if it isn’t I do not think
it is good for a small child to hit the water in the wrong position.
They certainly ought to learn to dive and to dive well, but not from
more than a ten-feet board--until they can really make a certainty of
a good clean dive from that height. I mention this as often one sees
ambitious parents urging on their children to dive from a thirteen or
fourteen feet board, when they cannot properly dive from three feet. Of
course a good teacher will not permit this, but good teachers are few.
Grown-up people also often make the same mistake, and go falling off
high boards long before they can dive from a low one. Also in the minds
of non-swimmers or divers there seems to exist the curious belief that
high diving is a gift. I have often been met with reproachful looks
after a dive, and the words, ‘I really don’t know how you do it, it is
_quite_ wonderful; and you know I have tried and I can’t spring a bit
like you can; isn’t it a shame!’ When answered somewhat prosaically
that it has taken fourteen years of hard practice to acquire that
spring, and that it is necessary to have the muscles developed in the
legs and body before it is possible to dive at all with any skill,
watch the non-swimmer’s mouth and you will see the one word ‘liar’
forming silently thereon!
These are a type who appear in swimming-baths and stand about on the
edge rarely venturing into the water, and, when they do, struggle about
in a half-drowned condition, believing that to show any muscle or
knowledge of swimming is to be thoroughly ungraceful--if not hopelessly
vulgar. They also have another trying habit, and that is of paddling
feebly round in circles always just on the spot where the divers from
the high boards must enter the water. When the frantic instructor
tries to explain the situation, they stare wildly round the edge, but
nothing will ever induce them to look up to where the danger comes
from. More than once I have become weak from laughter, standing on a
high board watching the instructor and paddler--also when eventually
the whole bath starts shouting at them and they are removed, it is a
certainty that in a sort of hypnotised condition they will be back in
the same spot shortly.
There is also another type very prevalent at swimming-baths, as I know
for my sins, and these are women who come and stand about on the edge
of the baths, for what reason I never could discover, unless it is
to talk, but it seems a damp and uncomfortable spot for indulging in
conversation. They always stand with their backs to the water, and seem
to be absolutely unconscious of both bath and swimmers. It does not
the least matter that there may be the most convenient balcony with
comfortable chairs provided for those who wish to watch the swimming,
not at all--nothing short of violence will move them, and if there is
a low diving-board handy, they always stand on it. Polite remarks such
as, ‘I wish to dive, please,’ or ‘Please I want the board,’ uttered in
a beseeching fashion, has no effect whatever. For years I treated these
people with politeness, but eventually my temper broke, with excellent
results, and I have now adopted a way which is instantaneously
effective, and I offer the suggestion with great pleasure to any of my
fellow-swimmers who have suffered in the same manner. Here it is--brush
past them heavily once or twice so that they get thoroughly wet, if
that is not effective run lightly up behind and shout ‘_Board!_’ with
all the strength your lungs are capable of, that will generally cause
them to jump several feet into the air, and while their nerves are
still trembling place them in the hands of an attendant to conduct to
the aforesaid balcony!
It is extraordinary how keen people get about swimming even when
they have taken it up quite late in life--I know several who swim
regularly, and work away at diving with the greatest diligence, and it
is much to their credit, as learning diving after you are full grown
is a most painful exercise, and if you are well on in years and heavy
I should have thought doubly so--and one would have imagined not a
very healthy exercise, but I know one or two women who are well past
middle age who have only the last year or two taken up swimming and
diving, and they seem to benefit greatly by it. I think it a very great
question as to whether giving swimming-baths to the very poor is an
advantage or not--I do not mean for a moment that they ought not to
have swimming-baths and also learn to swim, but done as things are at
present with insufficient instruction, and water that is changed only
once or twice a week, the risk of infection is great. If people who do
not wash regularly use swimming-baths, and a bath with soap is not
made compulsory before entering the public water, then running water
through the bath ought to be the alternative.
Let me once more urge parents to have their children taught to swim,
in the proper fashion, and with the proper ideas as to its value and
place in life, for there is no better sport or exercise than swimming
and diving to instil in a child’s mind purity and self-control, and
drive away that present-day great usurper of the mind, uncleanliness of
thought, the beginnings of which, alas! can sometimes nowadays be seen
in even the quite young.
BIG GAME SHOOTING
Nowadays it is the fashion for the wealthy young man about town to
go to India or Africa to hunt big game. So it may be of interest to
discuss a little this big game shooting from an educational point of
view--which point of view had not arisen, and of which there was no
need, before or during the last generation. But, alas! different times
and different men have turned hunting into a mere pastime of the lowest
kind--into an excuse for killing in an unsportsmanlike fashion, to be
used as a sop for a feeble, decadent vanity.
Such mighty hunters as Mr. Selous and the late Captain Gordon Cumming
made it possible only to honour and respect in every way such men, who
hunted in a clean, hard, fearless manner, spending their lives and
caring little of the way they risked them, so long as the task set
was accomplished. There was no necessity then to question as to the
sportsmanlike manner in which big game was hunted. It is more than a
pity that the same cannot be said at the present day.
In imagination one sees the many mighty hunters of bygone days: the men
who laboured and sweated in Africa during the time when elephant ivory
was a paying game. The years of hardship, of carrying one’s life in
one’s hand--the only thing that kept death away, an antiquated rifle
that took a minute to load--these were men to whose memory all real
sportsmen must doff their hats and bend their heads in reverence.
One or two are still left to us, and written on their faces is the
story of the lives they have led--a story clean and fine to read--eyes
that look out with no shiftless look, bright and clear as steel; firm
lips that have suffered, perhaps, but have never trembled from fear;
lines drawn plentifully by the sun-god, but each line shaped by a
wholesome thought. No sagging lines of self-indulgence in these faces;
even if they had their merry roystering times on their few returns
to civilisation, they wiped out the marks by the months of arduous
and self-denying living which they spent hunting. Some to make money,
others because they had been born hunters and would continue to hunt
until the Most Mighty of all Hunters stretched forth His hand and
claimed them in their turn.
Sportsmen these in the greatest sense of the word. Turn in your graves,
ye who have passed on! Or, rather, let us pray that it is denied to you
to see the men and methods that follow so feebly in your footsteps.
Let me try and compare the going forth to hunt of a rich young man
of the present day, and one of these old hunters. The rich young man
starts, say, from Mombasa--it is the pet place of rich young men,
as it is easily got at, and a non-feverish hunting-ground can be
reached with little trouble. He, the rich young man, is quite often
accompanied by a professional white hunter, who takes all trouble from
off his shoulders, engages his men, runs the whole outfit for him, and
generally acts as male nurse to the rich young man, seeing that he does
not run his valuable head anywhere in the direction that danger might
lurk. He is, as a rule, a first-class shot, so if his charge misses or
maims a dangerous animal, he can always rectify matters. In fact, he
sets the scene, writes the play, acts as audience, and the rich young
man plays the chief part, and the whole thing as much resembles real
big game hunting as the theatre resembles real life.
Of course the running of the caravan is in itself no light work, as the
rich young man would find it terribly uncomfortable to travel with less
than sixty or ninety men, there are so many things to carry, tents,
chairs of different kinds to rest the aching back, tables, dozens of
plates, spoons, forks, and knives, beds, a mosquito-room to dine in,
champagne to restore the rich young man after his fatiguing day, two or
three portmanteaus of clothes--he might get fever if he did not change
constantly, and to sit about in sweaty clothes is very dangerous he has
heard--and then, my God! he might die, if he hasn’t brought a doctor
with him this time: he most certainly will if he ventures back into
Africa again.
The above may seem exaggerated, but I can most sincerely assure my
readers that it is not. It is merely the modern young man’s idea of
sport.
Bah! let me take a deep, clean breath, and get back to talking about
the real men, the hunters of old whom we can respect and look up to,
and feel glad that sometimes they will let us sit at their feet, and
learn from them a little of the wisdom they have massed together during
years of solitary travel. They are always quite modest men, putting
little value on their brave deeds, regarding it all in the day’s
work--though sometimes their eyes will sparkle as they tell of some
great adventure in bygone days. For it is near to their hearts, this
life of wandering, and they would lead no other. To do an unfair or
cowardly act would be an impossibility to these men, they are just good
sportsmen, and they want no fairer name.
How different their hunting! One or two men would carry all they
needed for months of travel; no stock of tinned food here, they ate
what they killed, and if they killed nothing, went without. A little
flour and rice, a knife, a spoon, perhaps a fork!--it was not a
necessity, so why take it? A small tent, a few odds-and-ends, a couple
of shirts. Everything worked down to the lowest limit. Not how much
can we take--the new gospel--but how much can we do without, and they
did without most things. They were there to hunt to the best of their
ability, not to coddle their bodies; they would have been ashamed to do
that at any time, as coddled bodies and clean souls do not as a rule go
together, and these men were essentially clean-souled.
Yes, they were out to hunt big game--man against beast--teeth and claws
against rifle--fair and square we met him and the best of us won.
Sometimes they died of fever, sometimes they were killed by the animals
they hunted--but one thing may be a certainty, and that is that each
and all who met his death did so fearlessly and with no repining. They
had taken the chances, and if the chances were too many for them, it
was all in the day’s work.
How pitifully few of our modern young men will stand comparison with
these old hunters--and it is in the comparing of the old with the new
which brings up the question in one’s mind as to whether it is not
actually excessively wrong from all points of view to hunt in the
manner indulged in by the man of the present day.
The question as to our right in the taking of animal life is bound, I
suppose, to arise in the minds of all who have children to educate,
and who think at all--and I personally find it one extremely hard to
answer, and am fain to make a compromise, which I know is, as a rule,
a great mistake: the young as a rule do not question, they hunt and
take life in a purely heartless fashion, seeming to feel no doubt as
to the right or the wrong of it, and while this is felt I should say
hunt if--and this is a very large if--the hunting is done so that
benefit for mind and body is got from it; but there is little doubt
that, indulged in as it is by the rich at present, it becomes a merely
degraded form of amusement. In the future, perhaps, we shall understand
more clearly and realise more definitely as to whether the taking of an
animal’s life is wrong or not. Let me try and explain what I mean when
I say sport ought only to be indulged in when of benefit to body and
soul.
It seems to me the only permissible excuse for killing ought to be,
firstly, for food; and secondly--by far the most important--that in
the pursuit and killing of game, a man becomes a finer, cleaner
type owing to the life he is forced to lead during that pursuit. It
is a life in the open air. He has to work hard, to lead a primitive
life, and generally has a chance to brush away from his mind and body
the uncleanly thoughts and clothes that are fostered and imposed by
civilisation. He must be independent, relying only on his own strength
and skill; he must live and hunt as nearly as possible as his savage
forefathers lived and hunted, and, having shaken clear of civilisation,
he has time to examine his mind and generally get things into their
proper perspective. He gives himself a chance to face his God and
himself if he does this fairly (and a few months of a primitive, clean
life will make him do it in spite of himself); he will come back
from his hunting trip a better, saner, and stronger man mentally and
physically than when he started, and his hunting will have provided
the object necessary to encourage him to lead this kind of a life. And
now we come back to the question, to kill or not to kill. There are
certain people, but rarely young people, who can go out and lead a
hard, primitive life, for the sheer love of the thing and for the good
of their souls, and not need any definite object to lure them on and
keep their minds busy. But the average man has travelled such a little
way along the big road of thought, that he requires to have something
to amuse the superficial part of his mind while he is straightening and
patching his tired soul and body.
Therefore, if killing is only used as an excuse for leading a clean,
healthy life, and it is done in a sportsmanlike fashion, it seems to
my humble judgment better to hunt and be clean, than not hunt and be
unclean. A compromise, I know, but the only one my poor judgment allows
me. If sport is not undertaken to make a better man of you, nowadays,
when it is not a necessity to hunt to live, then leave it alone, for
it can only deteriorate and hinder. Worthless is the man who goes out
hunting with no reason for his going beyond nurturing his personal
vanity, with the desire only of bringing home so many heads and skins
and showing them off to admiring relations and friends. Only too often,
he cares little if the trophies were gotten in a sportsmanlike manner;
he goes, accompanied by all the trappings and comforts of civilisation,
everything arranged and made easy, often even to having the animals
he hunts found and marked down for him. In fact, he sets forth to
accomplish a series of well-arranged animal murders, and he calls it
sport.
It would be truly instructive, if it were possible, to turn one of
these so-called men loose in Africa out of reach of civilisation, and
make him live as the real hunter of past days lived, dependent entirely
on his own eyesight, skill, and endurance. I very much doubt if one
week would not see him dying or dead, as from constant self-indulgence
from earliest youth, and soft living of all kinds, his eyesight is
rotten, his hearing is of no use whatever, and his staying power,
unless bolstered up by incessant stimulants, does not exist at all.
Unless the hunter of old had had all his senses very finely developed,
he would not have got very far, and Africa would have claimed more
white lives than she has already done.
The unfortunate thing is that this type of decadent young man who
overruns the healthy hunting-grounds of Africa, has done, and is doing,
a great deal of harm to sport. He has more money than brains and he has
no self-respect whatever. Therefore he indulges in a form of sport that
is no sport at all, but merely the seeking of a worn-out, unhealthy
mind after amusement. He goes in for a form of vice in sport, which is
a lust to kill in large numbers--how, does not in the least matter,
it is the quantity that matters; quality even does not attract him
largely, rather three small heads than one good one.
Also, to be cruel is perhaps more amusing than not to be cruel. I do
not think I am wrong in saying that in the old days the man who did
not kill as quickly and cleanly as possible would have been called a
bad sportsman. Boys were brought up to consider sport a very serious
thing, and to be named a good sportsman more or less hall-marked you.
They regarded sport very seriously, these great-grandfathers of ours,
and often in a manner which would appear to us with wider interests
somewhat ridiculous. But the trouble is that sport is still freely
indulged in--big game hunting more than it used to be, since great
distances can now be covered with ease and comfort--and the good old
rules as to what made a good sportsman and what didn’t, have, instead
of becoming more stringent, almost ceased to exist. The high ideals
which the old sportsmen kept constantly in front of them have gone,
and in their place reigns a most unwholesome desire to slaughter at
all costs, which has naturally led to many cruel forms of hunting that
would not have been tolerated in the old days. Fair play for man and
beast was the gospel of the old hunters. Amusement for the hunter is
the cry nowadays, and a poor lot of human beings indulging in a very
poor form of sport is the result.
A ceaseless endeavour to kill dangerous animals, and to remain
perfectly safe while doing so, is, from a sportsman’s point of view, a
somewhat nauseating sight. A favourite device of this sort is tying up
a live animal, such as a donkey or a goat, climbing up a tree to a safe
perch, and from there shooting lions, &c., which will come to devour
the tie-up. The feelings of the said tie-up during the hours of waiting
do not require much imagination to realise.
Hunting a lion with a pack of hounds, four or five men on ponies
with rifles, is another very favourite pastime nowadays. It has its
advantages in being fairly safe--for the men; the hounds, of course,
may suffer. The King of Beasts--would any one recognise him by that
name, as, hunted, winded, dazed by the clamour of many hounds, he tries
to make the long grass?--and, when he does make a break for the open,
it does not matter if one rifle misses, or only wounds him, there are
always two or three more to finish him off before he can retaliate.
If we will not face him on our feet, man and rifle against beast and
claws, would it not be more sportsmanlike to leave him alone? A pack
of hounds and four or six rifles against one lion. Well it is that
you mighty lion-hunters, who, unaided and badly armed, sought out and
killed your lions by sheer skill and bravery, taking all chances, and
only proud if the chances were against you--well it is that you have
passed on; or do your spirits still haunt that land of fascination
and disease, and, perchance, mourn over each great beast that is done
to death by the hands of degenerate creatures, who manage to preserve
their worthless lives against your mighty strength, merely by being
able to entirely obliterate from their minds what the words ‘good
sportsmen’ once meant?
It would be of some interest to know how many lions, of the many that
are killed nowadays, are met face to face, one man on the ground
against one lion. Not so very many, methinks. One hears so much about
the number of lions killed by So-and-so, but the methods of killing
are generally left to the imagination of the listener. I believe
there have been people degraded enough even to trap lions and think
no shame of it. Hardly would this be permissible even if there was a
famous man-eater to be killed, unless every other sporting method had
been tried and failed. Why this type of creature, who does this sort
of thing and boasts of it, is not taken and given a horse-whipping,
and then expelled from decent society, I know not--except that I
suppose the old sense of fairness and good sportsmanship is breathing
its last. I felt this very strongly when in London a short time ago,
I went to see some moving pictures of big game taken in Africa. One
of the pictures remains unpleasantly clear in my memory: it was
that of a hyena in a trap, caught by one leg; it grovelled along on
its belly, tongue out, covered with dust, in an agony of fear, and
showing the hideous misery of despair to be seen only in the eyes of
trapped animals; he ceased his convulsive efforts to get free for the
moment, and he was then stirred up with sticks, so that his struggles
might prove an amusing picture to be shown all over the world. It
was explained during this picture that the trap was padded and could
cause the animal no pain, as if pain of a wounded limb be felt or
matter much to a trapped animal. It is the terrible fear, the feeling
of helplessness and being at the mercy of all comers,--they who have
always been free--look at their eyes; and even if they be sorely
wounded, it is not pain you see there, but sheer, horrible terror,
the terror of the trapped animal, a thing to stamp out quickly by a
merciful death, or, better still, give it back its freedom. It was
also explained that anyway it did not matter much as the hyena was
a horrible animal! Fifty years ago, if moving pictures had existed
and such a picture had been shown to a house full of men, women, and
_children_, I feel certain that it would have been greeted with hisses
instead of the applause it received, and the man who had the indecency
to show such a picture would most likely have visited the nearest
horse-pond. Trapping has been done for years, as a rule to kill vermin,
but it is generally left to paid men and regarded as a disagreeable
necessity. We have come to sorry times indeed when we can regard the
struggles of a trapped animal as an amusing spectacle, and take no
shame in letting our children see such methods of sport. It is not only
in hunting dangerous game that cruelty is indulged in, for it exists
still more freely in the chase of the non-dangerous kind. Little shame
is felt in wounding, and allowing a wounded animal to get away to die
slowly in great pain from his wound, or perhaps to be eaten by one of
the greater hunting animals.
Unless a man is a perfect shot, he is bound to wound sometimes. But
he ought to do his level best to find the animal and put it out of
its pain. Nowadays there seems a sort of slackness about bothering
to go after a wounded animal, which must come from a total want of
imagination, and also from the lack of having it instilled severely
into boys’ minds like it used to be, that to wound and not to kill was
something to be very much ashamed of, and that, if it had been done,
it betokened a failure and a falling-off from the moral standpoint
of a sportsman. When this feeling was strongly developed, men were
more careful how they shot; they would not shoot at animals at a
distance that five times out of six they were bound to miss or wound;
they hunted more carefully, and took more pains about getting within
reasonable distance before firing. The mass of stuff that goes away
wounded in Africa from indiscriminate firing at long distances would
make a vast total if it could be counted up. I imagine boys also used
to be taught a more thorough knowledge of sport. The hunting of the
animals was considered of as great an importance as the letting off of
the rifle. A man was not content to have the beast found for him, and
he himself led up to it, the rifle placed in his hands, and sometimes
told even when to let it off! A good many of the young men of the
present day would be greatly at a loss, I fear, if they had even to
clean their rifles themselves, and to take a rifle to pieces would be
a Chinese puzzle to them.
The old hunters were a mine of information on the countries they
travelled in, and on the habits of the animals they hunted. The
present-day man seems almost as if he were deaf and blind, so little
does he know either about the animals he hunts or the countries he
travels in.
Surely sport regarded merely as a means to get so many heads and skins,
not caring if the lowest and most unsportsmanlike methods are used so
long as so much stuff is collected, must have only the most degrading
effect on the man who indulges in it.
Gone are the days when to live we had to hunt and kill. So if we now
hunt at all, let it be as an excuse to be in the great open places of
the world, bettering ourselves in mind and body. And let us at least
try only to employ sportsmanlike methods, and to follow staunchly along
the road that those mighty hunters of old marked so bravely for us.
RELIGION
It is hardly possible to pick up a newspaper nowadays without seeing
the word education heading many columns of printed matter containing
the views and theories on this subject from all kinds and conditions
of people and from all parts of the kingdom. Most of the newspaper
discussions are generally about the more or less trivial failings
on the part of our modern education, and rarely seem to make any
definite effort to discuss the serious evils which exist, and owe
their existence to the curious lack of reason and understanding in the
rearing of our young. It seems difficult to understand how any one
who has ever given the matter a moment’s serious thought can fail to
realise the hopelessness of the present methods of education, which
the average child of both rich and poor has to suffer from--both during
the period of that education and in their lives afterwards where the
effects of it follow them to the grave.
The evils of modern education are many, and not to be eradicated in a
day; but the great root of most of these evils, and that from which
they all spring, is that our children are given no God to worship, or,
rather, they are given a name, to which they gabble a prayer morning
and night, titter at if they hear mentioned, and thoroughly abominate
on Sundays on account of the boredom and discomfort inflicted on that
day in His Name.
Surely it would be well worth the experiment to replace what is merely
a disliked or ignored name with a real and living God in the children’s
minds, and I think the result would be that education would be helped
farther towards a perfect and sound basis than it has ever been before.
Teach them to have something strong and wonderful to believe in, a
reason for doing the right and avoiding the wrong, a great and splendid
helping presence, a living thought, instead of a hopelessly unjust
and tiresome nonentity, which at present is what He represents to the
average child.
Many people are trying and trying faithfully to find out the cause
of the failure in our modern education; and why, when so much money
is spent, results are so disappointing. Yet it seems to occur to few
that it is building on sand to try and impress upon the brain of a
developing human being the right way of living and learning, and at the
same time giving that human being no true reason as to why that way
is more right than any other way. The extremely young will believe,
perhaps, that because mother or teacher says such-and-such a thing,
that it is right, but the brain a little more developed rejects an
edict given with no reason behind it, and I feel most sincerely certain
that until God is made into a real living and helping thought in the
mind of the young, education will remain much where it is. From our
schools and homes a stream of men and women will continue to issue
forth with indifferent educations, lacking in culture, and with the
lowest of ideals, who are helpless prey to the first and strongest
influences that may seize on them. If the influences are for the good,
all may be well; but if they be for the bad, what help or strength has
ever been given in our education, mentally or physically, to assist in
combating them?
Religion as it is taught to the average child is not only worse than
useless, it is a blasphemy!--a strong word, I know, but a true one;
take any average child, rich or poor, and mention the Almighty to
him or her, and see the result: either a blank and uncomprehending
stare will be the result, or an inane giggle, followed by a bored and
long-suffering expression. Is not that blasphemy? Not from the child,
whose fault it is not, but from the people who are responsible for that
child and its upbringing.
I have travelled in many lands, but only in English-speaking countries
have I found the name of God treated with so little respect and
understanding amongst the young. And yet we call ourselves Christians,
the meaning of which word is followers after Christ. Children are the
most reasonable of creatures, and give them really strong and beautiful
reasons for everything they are asked to do, and they will cling to
those reasons with the greatest of strength and faith. Surely if we
could conquer our curious aversion to bringing God’s name into our
daily lives, except when we wish to take it in vain, it would make a
wonderful difference in the rearing of our children--to try and make
Him into a real and living presence, to help and strengthen in work
and play, not merely a Name to be bored, frowned, and laughed at; and
I feel certain education would show the most surprising results. It is
indeed difficult to understand that any one can seriously believe that
the manner in which religion is taught to children in our schools and
homes can ever have any influence or be of any help to them in their
future lives, still less in their work at school.
I imagine the question that might be asked is: What have the Almighty
and school-work to do with each other? Personally, I think the answer
is, ‘Everything.’ Unless the feeling of God’s presence and help is made
a real thing to children in the little worries, difficulties, and joys
of childhood, unless they learn to turn to Him in those small trials,
they are not, I think, likely when the large troubles of manhood and
womanhood come along to look for help and comfort in the only direction
from which it can come.
The feeling of His nearness ought never to be absent, whether it is
a sum to be struggled with or a page of history to be conquered; the
sum is struggled with and the page of history conquered, not because
of the punishment that might occur otherwise, but because a brain has
been given to us to be taken care of and developed to the best of our
ability, and that to neglect to develop it is to show that a trust God
has given us has been misplaced.
Later in life, when it is not a sum or a page of history that is our
difficulty or temptation, the habit of feeling the nearness of God’s
presence and the responsibility to Him will surely prove a very great
and real help.
Let us at least try to give our children something more than a name
to hold by in their hours of darkness and trouble, and if people who
‘having eyes see not and having ears hear not,’ cry Idealism and
Utopianism, let us take no heed, for all things are possible, even
Utopia.
_London: Strangeways. Printers._
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Contrast of the book cover has been adjusted for readability.
Typos corrected: repeated words printed on page 56, 70, and 80.
Superscripted text has been represented as “text^{superscripted}” in
this edition.
Illustration captions were originally printed on a separate page from
the illustration itself. They have been consolidated in this edition.
The locations of some illustrations have been moved to enhance
readability. Page numbers in the list of illustrations remain unchanged.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation, and capitalization after punctuation,
have been left unchanged.
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